- Penalties for and against Arsenal. The Mike Riley factor
- Penalties for and against. Are Arsenal being hard done by?
By Mike Fowler
Firstly, I give no apologies for plagiarising the title in Nitram’s recent article! We have independently, and by complete coincidence, both looked at different aspects of the game and having read his article on penalties and how Arsenal were treated, I felt I should share my basic findings in terms of how teams are treated in disciplinary terms i.e. fouls conceded and yellow and red cards received.
I should say at this point, I know Tony has posted quite a bit on the subject of cards for fouls and cards for “other reasons” and I share his interest in this subject. However, my calculations are based on ALL cards received and do not separate out ‘fouls’ from ‘other reasons’. I probably should have done this, but I started this some weeks ago and don’t want to start from scratch again. I also think that there is possibly a good reason for showing all cards in this context as it, probably, gives an overall picture irrespective.
Anyway, to the bones of the matter. I compared fouls and cards for all Premier Teams over the last five full seasons plus the current season to date. All figures are taken from Whoscored.com.
For simplicity, I settled on only analysing the thirteen teams which have been present in the Premier League for all six seasons. Here is a table showing the overall figures based on the highest number fouls conceded in the period.
A cursory look shows that whilst Arsenal are in the bottom three (11th) for fouls committed and in a similar position for yellows received (10th), they are top for red cards.
In fact, despite committing 4.3% fewer fouls than the average over the past five and a bit seasons, Arsenal have actually been shown 54% more red cards than average.
But it gets worse. When we compare this to one of the media favourites such as Manchester Utd we see that despite Man U committing higher than average fouls (and 8% more than Arsenal), Arsenal have received 150% more red cards than them. And it’s not because refs don’t pull Man U up for their fouls; they’ve actually received 19.5% more yellows than Arsenal. For some reason though, refs just don’t seem inclined to convert one yellow into two or don’t actually feel their fouls are as bad as Arsenal’s. Perhaps they just don’t feel “the letter of the law” applies to all teams equally!
Moving on, Nitram’s article looked at our main adversaries this season and alluded to the idea that Liverpool were treated more favourably than us when it came to penalties….a theory which his analysis strongly supported.
So, do my own findings also support the idea that Liverpool are treated more advantageously? I’ll just share some findings and let you decide.
Liverpool, on average over the past five and a bit seasons, have committed 3% more fouls than Arsena. However Arsenal have been shown 20% more yellow cards and an incredible 122.2% more red cards. Pretty conclusive in my view.
So, I wondered whether this was just a pro-Liverpool or anti-Arsenal bias or something more. After all, it has been noted on this site more than once how so many refs are from the NW of England whilst none are from London and the SE. So I thought I’d draw up a ‘regional’ table based upon the media idea of a ‘big six’. This bizarrely includes Tottenham (lol) but that does at least give us a 3 v 3 regional split. So looking more closely at those six, what do we find?
This table is based on fouls conceded but the most obvious thing that jumped out at me was that every London club received more red cards than every club from the north west. Also, this bears no relation to the number of fouls committed since although London clubs get blown up for committing 7.3% more fouls, they end up with 19.3% more yellow cards and 64.3% more red cards than their opponents in the NW. Yet another highly significant statistical anomaly.
But the original purpose of this article was not to look at what seems a pretty conclusive regional bias but to see whether Arsenal were specifically treated worse than those who could be considered direct opponents. On that basis, how have Arsenal alone fared against their NW ‘big six’ opponents (I’ve included Man U based upon their media favouritism).
So here I compare the average for a ‘top six’ team from the north west against Arsenal.
Basically, Arsenal supposedly commit 1.6% more fouls than a NW team on average but we see 7.2% more yellow cards meaning a team from the NW can commit 7% more fouls before seeing a yellow card.
What is considerably worse is that despite only committing 1.6% more fouls we are 114% more likely to see red. (No that’s not a typo! 114%!) This means we see a red for every 111.5 fouls whilst a NW team is allowed to commit 242.5 fouls before seeing one: more than twice as many.
Like I said, I’ll let you reach your own conclusions as to whether we play on a level playing field. I’ve reached my own without too much of a problem.
Good work Mikey
Again, absolutely damming numbers.
“Perhaps they just don’t feel “the letter of the law” applies to all teams equally!”
And there in one sentence is the crux of this matter. From cards to penalties it’s all about the application of the rules.
Regarding those mysterious ‘other’ cards, I believe they are for dissent, time wasting, gamesmanship, stuff like that. I think you will find that again a disproportionately high percentage of our yellow and second yellow cards are for that type of offence, and I actually predicted this a while back.
As brilliantly documented by Tony, our disproportionately large amount of yellow and red cards was successfully addressed by way of a massive reduction in the amount of tackles we put in that fed into a reduction in cards. I mean, as much as they might of liked to, it would of looked a tad suspicious if the refs had started carding us for EVERY foul we committed. As such, they had to find another way, and these ‘others’ are the perfect opportunity. And again, even though they are slightly less subjective, the referee can still apply enormous latitude whenever he feels like it, hence tapping the ball 3 yards is a card, whilst hoofing it the length of the pitch is not. And of course depending on who it is, all done with the full support of the fawning media.
I have mentioned my theory on ‘cheating without cheating’ on too many times to remember, which basically says that due to the enormous latitude afforded officials due to the subjective nature of so many decisions, on any one isolated occasion they simply cannot be wrong. Or right. It is subjective. Some people will think he is right, some wrong, and the range of agreement/disagreement could vary from 80/20 to 50/50 to 20/80, but always someone, somewhere will agree with the official.
This will never change.
But the problem arises when officials see these ‘subjective’ calls constantly in favour of one team and or against another.
If there are 20 subjective calls in a match and they go 50/50 to each team then we can all take them on the chin, whether we agree or disagree. But when we can see quite clearly that an enormously disproportionate amount of calls are going against or for one particular team, that’s when the problem arises.
That is why these analysis over medium and long term time spans are so important, because as I said, each decision, taken in isolation can be justified, just as almost every one of these subjective, ‘I’ve seen them given’ calls that have gone against us this year, (and every other year actually) have been. Nothing to see here guv. by the letter of the law it was another yellow.
But as Mikey says, when that Letter Of The Law only seems to be applied constantly to one team, we get these enormously disproportionate numbers, as shown by Mikey here on red Cards, and myself elsewhere on penalties.
Over such long periods of time it is much harder, nay IMPOSSIBLE to justify such bias.
Our recent red cards experiences provide an explanation of the strange disparties revealed by these figures – ie not one of them was for serious foul play, not one of them would have been awarded to any other team and all of them reflect a unique interpretation and application of the “letter of the law” when Arsenal are concerned.
Contrast this with Liverpool, for whom Van Dyck and Konate have had a number of potemtially red card offences ignored by referees and consider the recent example of the latitude allowed to Chelsea to repeatedly commit serious fouls against Arsenal, including a blatant kicking of Trossard on the ground with the ball out of play. In the majority of our games, our players are fouled many times before an opponent is cautioned, whilst an Arsenal player is likely to receive a yellow card for their very first infringement. In the rare occasions when an opponent is booked first, the referee is usually very quick to “even it up” by booking an Arsenal player at the next possible opportunity.
Mikey, thank you for the work in assembling the evidence which proves that our complaints about referees are justified.
Two conclusive articles confirming that something is rotten in the state of Premier League football .
Perhaps these findings should be shared with sites from both Chelsea and Tottenham for despite our local rivalry they too appear to be disproportionately affected by this bias.
The problem we have is that we know people will read this and just call us paranoid, conspiracy theorists or some other derogatory term. It will, despite irrefutable evidence of bias against Arsenal, be dismissed out of hand with the claim that ‘you can make statistics say anything’, which you quite clearly cannot by the way.
Yes, over very short times or with limited or inaccurate data you possibly can.
Look, West Ham beat Arsenal at the Emirates. West ham are better than Arsenal. You cant argue with the facts.
But you can. When you look over an entire season you can see Arsenal are a better team than West Ham.
And the more data you have, over the longer time, the more reliable the conclusions.
It is very difficult to argue with our conclusions on data taken over between 5 and 15 years.
And that’s the point. Despite all the abuse we will get, nobody will be able to put forward a creditable counter argument. Or maybe they will? That could be fun.
Apologies that the tables weren’t included in the article, this might have given a little more food for thought. I think I may have sent them to Tony in a form he was unable to replicate. One of the things that they revealed was that in the past five and a bit seasons the “big six” had received a total of 74 red cards. 28 to the three NW clubs and 46 to the three London clubs. So London clubs supposedly (I say supposedly because given the bias shown in every other area of refereeing, it makes sense to believe that some fouls given against certain clubs would not have been given against other clubs), anyway, London clubs supposedly committed 7.3% more fouls than their NW counterparts. For those 7.3% more fouls, the London clubs received 19.3% more yellows and a staggering 64.3% more reds.
In every scenario, Arsenal are treated worse than all five of the other “big six”, despite committing a below average number of fouls. It is beyond belief how a club in the bottom three for committing fouls can have the worst record for red cards not just this year but also for the previous five years.
As you agree Nitram, much of this is about the subjectivity of “other” offences which appear to be used somewhat strategically by the PGMO….second yellows for Rice and Trossard being the most obvious!
And in answer to your question about how “other” yellows have panned out this season, Liverpool are bottom with just 7 yellows whilst we are second with 25 yellows…..just a mere 357% more than Liverpool!! Maybe I’ll take a look at how this aspect of the PGMO assault pans out over several years….watch this space!
@ Porter
It’s interesting that just having had a cursory glance at Whoscored.com and the table for disciplinary records. The top ten includes just one from the north of England, three from the Midlands and six from London and the South. Funny that!! I feel some more days of number crunching coming on! Perhaps there might then be a good case to share with our southern counterparts!
Mikey,
Congratulations on a compelling piece and thank you, thank you, thank you. You can’t refute facts but they’ll try. I live in the States where it’s the way of life.
Mikey ,It’s always been my contention that as Nitram said Arsenal paranoia will be thrown at you , but if you can show that they too have been affected there might be the start of a joint force that might grow into a concentrated pressure group to bring about change. I have a few Chelsea supporting friends that just say the hackneyed same old Arsenal always whinging retort .However if you can bring forward the facts that show that they too are subject to the bias then that argument falls . To get change there needs to be a consensus highlighting the facts across the board and sometimes it’s in the interest of the parties concerned to join together to force it . A lone voice is as useful as Don Quijote and it is a bloody great windmill that you are tilting at.
Im curious to know who over the years for the big 6 have been reffing them. Like a table would be a start.